This might be premature or unnecessary, since there's no guarantee there will be future contests, but I thought I'd plant this seed in case things occur to people in the wake of crunch and review or as they're playing and debugging. @outstar @huddyvonschland

This is a repost from the Dark Pack Discord. I've included responses from Ethan, as I thought they were a valid alternate point of view:

1. dwsnee — Today at 11:07 AM

   For future gam jams, we might rethink what constitutes "accessibility and bug fixes," post-deadline. I feel this is a strong advantage to elaborate games who are able to seed things before deadline and "fix" them for weeks after. I'm sorry if this sounds bitter. I crunched pretty hard to submit a working game on time and might have initially chosen a different engine and/or scope if I understood this would be allowed. Even with a text-based game, I built editing and debugging into a rigorous dev schedule, and I might have scoped further if I knew I could use time after submission to polish in this way.
2. 

   Ethan — Today at 11:10 AM

   Given that the games are being played right from the get-go once judging begins, I think it's important to remember that after-the-fact bugfixes probably only factor to a limited degree in terms of how they're evaluated.
3. 

   dwsnee — Today at 11:13 AM

   I see your point. However, many games are still updating. As of this morning, Huddy and Outstar had 18 and 15 games unplayed. It's been 10 days since deadline, which is 1/3 of the total time added again. It wasn't a targeted comment. But I think the advantage is pretty measurable, objective, and honest. (edited)
4. [11:16 AM]For instance, I devoted >5 days throughout to debugging and editing. If I had used those same days to write more, based on my daily average of 3k-5k words, I might have added 20k words, then done all my rewrites and edits after submission. That addition would have been substantial for me.
5. 

   Ethan — Today at 11:17 AM

   I don't think your scheduling is something that you'll have to regret. After all, we don't know the judging criteria - delivering a polished product is probably an important factor!
6. [11:19 AM]And with or without submission, I'm pretty sure you delivered the longest game in the jam in terms of volume of writing - even without any additions. Having played Blood Frontier, I think you've made something worth being proud of.
7. 

   Ethan — Today at 11:20 AM

   I suppose I'm just not sure how we could narrow the scope of what constitutes bugs/accessibility without causing problems.
8. 

   dwsnee — Today at 11:20 AM

   Thanks for saying that and for playing my game. My suggestion was only for the future. Something as simple as limiting bug fixes and accessibility until after judging simply seems more fair to me.
9. 

   Ethan — Today at 11:21 AM

   That would result in games like The Joker in Yokohama being unable to be considered though, since it was made and released in Japanese but couldn't be judged until the English TL was finished after the fact.
10. 

    dwsnee — Today at 11:23 AM

    I understand it puts some people at a disadvantage in terms of spoken language. I would argue this advantage exists with proficiencies in coding languages. It simply has to be scheduled for. Just my opinion as a creator and participant.
11. @EthanI suppose I'm just not sure how we could narrow the scope of what constitutes bugs/accessibility without causing problems.

    dwsnee — Today at 11:31 AM

    I would just have the fixes window start after the contest is judged. Obviously, they're the sponsors and can do whatever they want, I just thought it was a valuable perspective. Being the first of these, I know you hatch things out as you go--can't steer a car that isn't moving.

Cheers, all. Happy holidays.

I understand both sides on this! I think that next time, we could have a compromise of allowing a week of grace period to do bug/accessibility fixes, then not being allowed to touch it until the end of judging. Then, after judging, we'd be allowed to do as many bugfixes/translations/accessibility updates as we want. 

This is just my take though, and I made a very programming-lite game, and this is my first gamejam, so take my words with a grain of salt aha. I hope we get to do another jam next year!

I find that plenty non English speakers wrote in English for the jam. I've helped quite a few with typos and one typo was found on my side. If judges require for the game to be in English, I find that that should be added as criteria and not something after the fact. 

That being said, I don't consider this jam to be objective, bur rather subjective. For me it was a bit of fun and a place to play with my passion, see if I can make something, if we went for an objectively professional lens:

- teams should not have been allowed, or there should have been a clear people limitor, as someone working alone will struggle to compare to a professional team of 5-10 people. 

- sub-topic should have been thrown in on day 1 to make sure that games couldn't have been pre-planned or pre-made before the deadline. We're going on scout's honour here mostly. 

- judging criteria must have been made clear from the getgo. For example, if a person is using a dark-pack versus a person that made a game with no graphics, versus a person that did all their graphics themselves (but they're not up to par to dark-pack graphics), if you are judging visuals, how do you compare here? Do you give the text novel person negative marks for their chosen genre? Do you give the dark-pack user extra marks because it is beautiful graphics, or do you also rate them down in favour of the person that went through the effort to make their own? With a regular judging choice of "add N/A to the category and then divide the score by amount of categories that the game qualified for" could mean that someone that took the time to make their own visuals will get penalized for doing so, as they could potentially score lower on those, while the title with "N/A" in that category would not have that score dragging down their average. Such issues are normally solved with dividing products into genres and therefore not comparing text adventures with visual novels, though the question on dark-pack graphics versus homemade graphics would remain.

- verdict on demos? Some games have so much potential (for example, look at Shadow play or Oslo by Night Act 1), but unless they win by the rules they will never be finished. However if you put them side by side with a finished product, how do you judge a product on its potential to be a finished product, versus an actual finished product? In my eyes this would mean that unfinished games are already not competing on auto, but they could be amazing finished games, though the authors will never be able to finish them, leaving all of them in a sad state of "could have - should have".

Now there's nothing bad in subjective jams! The only grievance I have here is that I tried multiple games that I wish could all be showcased on steam and I know that only 1 will. For example, I think that Blood Frontier should live as its own product. But I also would like A night at Hotel Lasombra to have its place too, even though the approach to the making of these two games and the themes was so incredibly different. And I'm nowhere done playing all entries myself, so I can't even say if I'll run into something else that will be super impressive for me.